Finding Your Way Home; The Secrets to True Alignment

EMDR & Trauma-Specialist Sophie Brigstocke: Healing from Codependency, one boundary at a time...

• Anthea Bell

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Gorgeous Listeners, welcome to this week’s episode of Finding Your Way Home,

A special treat - the opportunity to sit down with someone whose entire career has centred on "holding space" and healing trauma through a deeply somatic lens. 

Sophie Brigstocke is a phenomenally-gifted EMDR Therapist, Coach and Trauma-informed Breathwork Practitioner. Long before this, she was a birth-worker - not only supporting a generation of healthy births, but training a school of practitioners beneath her.  

And today, we dive into one of our utter passion topics - how to truly heal the patterns of Codependency that are often so woven into the fabric of our family dynamics, friendships and even professional hierarchies. 

In our conversation you will learn:

  • The tell-tale signs you are in a codependent dynamic, and what this leaning may be trying to provide / protect you from
  • How to un-mesh the enmeshment: boundaries, self-connection, beginning to rewrite the script of your relationships
  • Applying this lens to the role of "Practitioner", "Healer", Therapist - what is the balance between caring for others, even in a professional role, and becoming overly-attached to fixing
  • How to spot and navigate the propensity for burnout
  • Breathwork through a trauma-informed lens - Sophie recounts some of the startling practices she has seen in this space, that we can learn from as space-holders
  • The power of letting going of societal expectations around romance; how to allow you unique journey to evolve, and how prioritising the self can ultimately transform the sort of partner you attract

This is such a deeply rich, healing conversation - and profound for anyone who knows themselves to "people-please" or in any other way condition themselves to behave with others. Relish it my loves. 

To find out more about Sophie and her work:

Find her on Instagram: @sophie_brigstocke
Visit her website: https://www.sophiebrigstocke.com/

Stay connected with the podcast:

Thank you for listening; it means the world to us. We'd be so grateful if you could rate, review or share this gorgeous episode with someone you love. That small act brings us to new ears and eyes - it builds the movement of health and connection that FYWH is built on. 

For more information and upcoming news on the podcast, follow us on  @ab_embodiment and our website. 

And to explore working together more deeply:

  • Apply for an exclusive space on the Embodiment Coaching Certification 2025 - taking your client work to a profound level of depth & impact
  • Secure your space at our beautiful retreat in Costa Rica this Autumn. 6 days of sacred ceremony, moving you into the body, into the heart and through the emotional / historic blocks that have held you back. Prepare for a depth of connection you have never felt, in one of the most magical landscapes in the world. Be with us...

Sending love, wherever this finds you,

Ax

So given that I, I am I am an EMDR practitioner, my, my interest is in supporting people who hold trauma and, and let's be honest, we all hold trauma. we were talking about secure attachment and childhood. Um, issues and the things that have happened for us or did not happen for us. And, um, Nicole Lepera, who I adore, often talks about trauma being the things that didn't happen for us, not just things that happened to us. And so if we, we weren't loved or cared for or nurtured in the way that we actually needed that, that can cause trauma in the body. So I work with people who, who carry trauma. All sorts of different things. Um, and I'm very aware that with trauma often comes a dysregulated nervous system. And so for me, the first and most important. Things to help people come back to themselves. I love the name of your podcast. It's, it's about finding your way home. And if I think back to myself, I think I probably existed in the top left part of my brain for so long. I had no concept of felt sense. Um, I, I didn't, as I said, didn't know what my feelings were, my needs were. And I certainly didn't trust my intuition. So, so many of my clients. Are overthinking, they're hypervigilant, they are dysregulated, they're moving very quickly. They, they need to settle and soothe. I'm really passionate about a type of breath work called harmonic or resonant or coherent. And that's all about slowing the breath down. Um, and when we slow the breath down, we can bring the rest of the body into alignment. It's, it's quite magical to, to experience and to witness

Anthea:

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

Welcome, gorgeous listeners to this week's episode of Funny Your Way Home. We have a beautiful creature for you today. She is a friend. She is a colleague. She is an exquisite mind body creative practitioner. Her name is Sophie Brigstocke. Sophie is an exquisite coach. She's also got a lot of specialist expertise in the realms of. Breath work, facilitation, retreat, holding, and has a particular interest, not just in creating spaces that are really sacred, caring, supportive on an energetic and emotion level for her clients, but also beginning to move people through some of the complexity, let's say, of understanding. Where do I start? And where do I end and where does the other person start and where do they end? So we are diving today into the theme of codependency among many of the topics that we're going to explore for you. And I'm actually gonna ask Sophie to to start us there with what has your journey with codependency been and why does that feel like such a fresh and important topic for you today? Firstly, wow. How do I follow that? And thank you for having me here. Um, such a good question. I, um, I think I first heard the word codependency when I was in my very late teens and. Somebody said something about me being codependent. In relationship to my mom, and I was so offended, and I was offended without even knowing what it meant. But there was something in it that felt like a judgment, a criticism of my relationship with my mom. And I was in, you know, I absolutely adored my mom. And, um, what I came to, to understand much, much, much later down the line was that perhaps we were kind of, mm. A little enmeshed rather than in a, a healthy dynamic. So I completely ignored that whole co codependency word at that point. It got raised again, uh, when I was in my mid twenties and, and very, very, very unwell, very, um, had very serious anxiety, which impacted me for, for a lot of my life. Um, but it wasn't until it came to the end of my marriage that I. Took the power back. I had been giving my power away to health professionals, to doctors for a long time, and I had been told by one of them, definitely don't ever go and do talking therapy because you are far too analytical. It would be a dangerous thing for you to ever go and talk to someone. And I finally decided at the ripe old age of. 37 or something like that, that I was actually going to do that because my intuition was telling me I needed to talk to somebody and needed to understand why I was the way that I was, and my life was pretty miserable. My anxiety levels were sky high. I felt like I was surviving, not living, certainly not thriving in my life. And so I went and I started talking to somebody and within two sessions she helped me to understand what codependency was. And I still struggle to this day to to define it because I think it shows up differently for everybody. But what I came to realize I saw this beautiful phrase, which is that codependency is a survival strategy. And actually that landed so cleanly for me. And so, yeah, that, that was kind of the dipping points for me into codependency over the years. But it was, it was only really in my late thirties, and that's where I feel like the big journey, for want of a better word, began And all of the stuff that's happened since that has been just so transformative. It's really beautiful to hear your take because I'm, I'm aware of a couple of things and I'm gonna just sort of share them for the benefit of the audience, especially if this is a, your first time meeting. Sophie, uh, welcome to the treat that is that experience, and, and b, if it's your first time really considering this topic. So you, you mentioned at the beginning of your account this, this quality of enmeshment over involvement potentially with one's primary caregiver. Yeah. Assuming that, that your mom was in that role. Mm-hmm. And I think what's really beautiful and important about that example is that many of us will not know that we are in a dynamic where the other person has come to occupy way more space in our mind than even our own first self preserving instinct. That pattern then, and this was certainly my experience, that pattern then ends up repeating itself again and again and again in the sorts of dynamics that one enters. I didn't know it from a familial perspective, but what I did know was that all of the women that I was drawn to were women that inhabited this quite. Sizable, scalable, strong, um, deeply entitled quality, and I both adored that. Mm-hmm. And it was an aspect of myself that was utterly extrapolated from the woman that I considered myself to be. So the only way that I knew how to be with those women was to be in servitude to them. And actually that ended up being my. Fix. Mm-hmm. And you and I play a lot with the theme of, oh, uh, are we fixing are we using in some way on this emotional experience? And all of the work that I've done on, on addiction and addiction recovery and all of that, joy confirms to me more and more and more that when we are leaning towards a material substance to find a hit. The pathway for that started way earlier on in relational dynamic, and it is such a seductive trance that way of relating to another human being that we just don't notice. When we go into it, and let's bear in mind that for anyone that's a practitioner, as a coach, as a facilitator, as a retreat holder, if you haven't figured out this codependency and measurement stuff before you go into that practice, by God being a profession of that kind will teach you. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because one of the, the key words that comes up for me, time and time and time and time and time again. Is boundaries and it's become, you know, another one of these buzzwords that's out there, um, like healing and like journey. Um, but boundaries are something that I had no concept of at all. And I love hearing you speak into that. It speaks to so many different aspects of codependency for me, what I know about myself, about the nature of my personality. That I am very much, I'm an Enneagram two. For those of, for those who are interested in Enneagram. I'm a considerate helper. I derive great joy, such great joy and pleasure from supporting other people. I'm a giver. I'm a helper. I'm a healer. I. I nurture people. For 20 years I worked in the perinatal field. I was a doula and a baby massage teacher and a breastfeeding counselor, and then I ran a doula training school and I in training hundreds and hundreds of doulas. I realize so many of the people attracted to that work are also the helpers, the caregivers, the nurturers. And that is a beautiful thing about, uh, about someone's personality. But as with every other type of personality, there are the light and there are the dark sides and the dark side of being a helper and someone who is compassionate and designed to give is that you can. It can lead to burnout, it can lead to resentment, it can lead to, um, wanting to manipulate control mother smother. Um, and for me, I recognized, and, and this is kind of harking back to the enmeshment piece, I realized that I perhaps, um, unwittingly. Took on a huge amount of responsibility. I wasn't asked to, but just maybe it was part of my nature. Maybe there were other things and, and I'm very interested in transgenerational trauma. And what we bring into this lifetime, not just what we deal with in this lifetime. So I, I always assumed a huge amount of responsibility for other people, and people are naturally drawn to me because I am caring and loving and nurturing. But what that can be, the downside of that for me is that I can go into therapizing, rescuing, fixing. And, and that can lead to an imbalance in relationships. Relations for me need to be balanced. There needs to be give and take. There needs to be reciprocity. Otherwise I can get to a point where suddenly. I feel resentful and, and I become what I describe the angry martyr or the exploding doormat, and neither of those things do I like about myself, and I don't wanna go to that place. I don't want to get to a place of such unhealthy behavior in codependency that I become the angry martyr or the exploding doormat. Yeah. It's a, it's a profound thing, that balance question. I, I also am reminded of the fact that. So this beautiful creature that we're talking to, audience, she was on my sofa a couple of, uh, days ago actually. And at the end of one of those gorgeous three, four hour sort of endless conversation catch ups, she turned to me and she said, Anthea, are you receiving very much at the moment or are you, are you giving rather a lot? And you know, everyone needs a friend in their corner that says to them. What is the balance like for you in terms of the span of your relational dynamics? And I think what you're describing really beautifully is, is this is this bias that we can have if we are in that pattern and we are not aware of it. You know, awareness within coaching is the most critical first piece. until you have awareness, very little else can happen 100%. Within a human life, if we're really aware of the fact that in the body, in the mind, in the emotional landscape, diversity is the best ecosystem to have, then you do need a diversity of different roles. Sometimes I'm wearing the hat, sometimes I'm not wearing the hat, and what you were talking about before is almost this place of a groove that we get into where the only way I can feel safe As an adaptive response is that actually I have to be the provider. I have to be the fixer. I have to be the problem solver. Oh my goodness. Yes. Absolutely. And I mean, get very, very comfortable in that place. to go back, you were talking about sort of addiction, it can become quite addictive to be in that place all the time, but it's not healthy. this is just my personal take, but I think part of the reason that it becomes so addictive is if we think about that early pattern. often, the feeling for the psyche and the feeling for the child is one of disempowerment. If I am betrothed to you, beholden to you, in my mind, if my survival is utterly premised on you, then I am in a power dynamic where I am the weaker of the two. Hmm. And in childhood, of course, that's normal. From a primitive evolutionary perspective, great. That is exactly as it is meant to be. And later on in life. Either you continue to yoke yourself in those same dynamics, or you take the position. Let's say this is the shadow side coming out. You take the position of finding your own groove of holding the power. Mm. And the danger there is that you make the other one, the one that is yoked, the other one, the one that is beholden. And it took me a really long time to see that that was one of these surreptitious gains of being a practitioner. And it was so uncomfortable when I realized it because it, it violated the identity I'd given myself of the helper. Mm. And I think that's one of the biggest, most squeezey moments of truth that a practitioner can have of asking themselves, am I also getting off on the power of this? Absolutely. And, and, and you and I have both witnessed across many, many different modalities when the ego comes in and takes over and, and I think that's a very dangerous. Thing. My, my one desire is that I always keep my feet on the ground, that I stay true to myself and that I don't get caught up in believing that I am right because when I'm working with people, my clients, they are the only person who can be right about themselves. End of story. when you are talking about that, I, I, I'm really reminded of the self-worth piece, and one of the things that is so common in codependency is low self-worth. And so when things come in, which kind of artificially elevate a feeling of self-worth, and I, someone used a phrase with me that I hadn't heard before. But I really liked when I was early on learning about codependency, which was about being right sized. And so often I felt less than less than everybody else. And I'm very, very good at making myself feel less than other people. I mean, imposter syndrome, you know, writ galore. And as that started, and I, I love to talk about, you know, the pendulum swinging analogy that often when we start, it's like the boundaries thing. When you first learn about boundaries, what often happens is that people put up rigid walls. It's like, I've never had any boundaries. Everyone's been able to do everything they've ever wanted to me, and now I'm going to go absolutely no to absolutely everything and I'm not going to be in. Any way flexible or adaptable. Um, so it takes a while for the pendulum to, to swing and to settle and to find a healthy middle. And that's the case with boundaries. It's also the case with the self-worth piece You were talking about the types of people you were attracted to, and I know for me that I was always very, very attracted to, highly charismatic, enthusiastic, larger than life, talented, creative people. That often that came from a place of less than in me, rather than rightness. Um, and whilst I adore and, and love and honor talent in people and creativity, that is so exciting to me. I don't want it to be coming from an unbalanced place. Gosh, it's gorgeous to hear you. It has to be that. From my place of fullness, I see all that you are and, and there's no part of me that is either overly attached to that or threatened by that actually. You were touching almost on how susceptible are we to displays of affection. I've been reflecting on that a lot recently. Do I have a, um, a vulnerability to being manifestly cared for or being seen as special? Do I have a vulnerability when someone shines that charisma? Onto me. And the answer to that I've realized is yes, it's too much. It's, it's too, it's too sweet. It's too delicious. I, I lose myself in that moment and it becomes all about the other person. And, and that's part of where that charisma cycle comes in. you also reminded me of the fact that one of my, earliest influences said she had gone from a place where she just chronically said yes to everything and managed, like you said, living this life that is not thriving. It is just gray and tiring. Overly burdened. She went from that to I say no to everything. And as you say, the no, the no speaking is very brittle. Yeah. I, I prefer the concept if, if of, of, if I am saying yes to something, I'm saying no to something else. And if I'm saying no to something, I'm saying yes to something else. So what is it that I'm saying no to? If I say yes, if this invitation comes in and I, without thinking about it, go, yes, of course, I'll travel 400 miles to come to your birthday party, which is gonna last half an hour and it's gonna cost me 7,000 pounds to get there. No, to give you a very extreme example, but if I stop to think about if I'm saying yes to that, what am I saying no to? Well, I'm saying no to. Some peace in my system at 7,000 pounds that that would stay on my bank account. You know, not having to travel all of things. It, it's, it's beginning to see the other side of it and I think people pleasing it is one of the most common things that I see in codependent behavior and people pleasing is, is so often about. Like me, like me, like me, like me, because. I need to feel safe in my body. I need to feel safe, and if everybody else is okay around me, I can be safe. And I absolutely know that I was, I was in that place. I was a master at prioritizing other people's feelings and needs to the extent that I had no concept whatsoever. Of what my own feelings and needs were, and it's still something I have to work on. I still have to make time consciously bring the awareness piece in to like, how do I feel? What is it that I need? And when I go into those places of, of lower mood or whatever it happens to be. To recognize that there's something there that often it is about an unmet need and, and one of the things that kind of ties in so much with all of this is, is shame. Like there are many times that I have felt and feel shameful for having needs. And yet we're all human beings. We all have needs, we all have feelings. We are all messy humans living a messy human existence. Why should I not have needs and feelings? Mm-hmm. And ultimately, I suppose if we are not willing to choose. To listen to and prioritize those needs realistically, no one else will. It has to start here. I do very much subscribe to the idea that we can learn how to love ourselves by virtue of being well loved in some senses, evolutionarily, that is what happens if you think about securely attached children. What have they experienced? They've experienced that. I also think if you get a pet and that pet is devotional and occasionally. Somewhat ish. You, you actually do start to, to swim in the sort of oxytocin experience of affection and care. And that can be hugely reinforcing for someone to feel love and purpose and meaning and service and all of those things. But it, it is a radical and very important reality. I have to choose me. I have to, because that is the only choice really, fundamentally that matters. And there will be a gamut of people that don't. Because being chosen really isn't actually the point anyway. And people are very individual on what they need or they want, or they're looking for at any one given moment in their lives. It won't necessarily be a match. So what I feel like I'm hearing as you're talking is also a great degree of pragmatism. The, the, the playing field has become very level, you know, we no longer need everyone to like us on a black and white basis in order to feel safe and, uh. We no longer need to be the exceptional in order to be safe. We right size, like you say. Mm-hmm. Can I ask you as a spot check for those, the listening that are just early into this theme, give us some, some bullets of what you no longer say yes to, that you would have said yes to at the height of the codependent era of your life. I remember in a year of insanity when my marriage was breaking down, someone asked me to be to be the class rep for the PTA at school, and I was probably in the worst position to do that role and to be any good at all in that role. Yet the codependent part of me was I've been asked to do it and therefore I must do it. And no one, if I don't do it, no one else is going to step up and do it. I mean, that's very, very common. The martyr came out. Um, and then the sort of, I should the shoulding on myself all the time and for me should is, is could with shame. And I've already mentioned shame coming in. So that kind of thing was, um, was really. Massive um, saying yes to things like food that I didn't want to eat. I have a histamine intolerance issue. I have a lot of foods that I. Can't eat, um, and choose to avoid. And, um, somebody would put something down in front of me and I'd just, you know, I, I would know internally that I didn't want to eat it, but I'd be, oh, yes. Thank you so much. That's so lovely. Yes, of course. I'm going to eat that and make myself ill. you know, stay up later than I wanted to stay up. You know, my body would say that I was exhausted and tired and wanted to go to bed, but to please somebody. I would stay up later or it, there's so many examples from, from the micro to the macro and um, it's really beginning to look from a boundaries perspective and the saying no, it is looking at each and every relationship in your life and working out. Where they are healthy and where things need to shift a bit. So you're reminding me of two things. One is that we really can't learn to know ourselves if we are deeply. Patterned in codependency because in that it's about a very particular role that I have to fulfill in relation to these other people in my life. It's not really truthful, it's not really authentic. So that's piece number one. Anyone that's coming to this podcast or comes to work with people like us to discover, oh my God, who really am I? The only way that you can get there is by gradually coming back home and removing the over attachment to other people. Mm-hmm. So that's point number one. Point number two that you're making me think of actually ties to your comment about the ego. I was reflecting on a topic that I know we had penciled in to talk about, which is, what is it like to be in practitioner space with, places where the ego has become very strong and therefore actually. The client is not necessarily cared for in the way that they need to be. So this theme has been coming up in relation for you, I think with breath work. Oh, yes. And my sense from you talking about this with me is that in those spaces, there is a kind of guru up on the stage. And I, I'm finding that guru ego topic. Really an interesting segue from the codependency dynamic. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about. Your views on that. Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's something that I experienced in the yoga world, um, and, uh, I, you know, much has been written about various yoga personalities and, um, sort of bad behavior within communities and certain sort of people who, who position themselves as gurus. Um, and breath work is, is. I mean, ancient, ancient, uh, however, it's sort of a newer modality that sort of seems to be trendy, um, right now and for all the right reasons, because breath work is extraordinary. Um, and it has been so powerful for me. And I, I, I've had a few conversations with different breath work practitioners recently. Been made very aware of, of some practices that are happening in the breath work world. So given that I, I am an EMDR practitioner, my, my interest is in supporting people who hold trauma and, and let's be honest, we all hold trauma. we were talking about secure attachment and childhood. Um, issues and the things that have happened for us or did not happen for us. And, um, Nicole Lepera, who I adore, the holistic psychologist, often talks about trauma being the things that didn't happen for us, not just things that happened to us. And so if we, we weren't loved or cared for or nurtured in the way that we actually needed that, that can cause trauma in the body. So I work with people who, who carry trauma. All sorts of different things. Um, and I'm very aware that with trauma often comes a dysregulated nervous system. And so for me, the first and most important. Things to help people come back to themselves. I love the name of your podcast. It's, it's about finding your way home. And if I think back to myself, I think I probably existed in the top left part of my brain for so long. I had no concept of felt sense. Um, I, I didn't, as I said, didn't know what my feelings were, my needs were. And I certainly didn't trust my intuition. So, so many of my clients. Are overthinking, they're hypervigilant, they are dysregulated, they're moving very quickly. They, they need to settle and soothe. I'm really passionate about a type of breath work called harmonic or resonant or coherent. And that's all about slowing the breath down. Um, and when we slow the breath down, we can bring the rest of the body into alignment. It's, it's quite magical to, to experience and to witness and. So it's all about going slowly. It's all about listening to observing and being with your clients and creating a safe space, a space in which people feel like they can do this, because emotion may well come to the surface. And I, last summer I went to a a breath work event. I love being facilitated. I'm passionate about this stuff and, and I want to be facilitated. And I went to an event and it was hosted by somebody who'd flown into the uk and it was in this, um, incredible venue, but they had crammed bodies into that venue. There were 200 people in the room. Most of whom said they'd never done any kind of breath work before. And then we were guided into a really, really activating practice, and I immediately did not feel like that was safe for me. And so I removed myself from the room. I just thought I, you know, I, I know myself well enough now that I'm not gonna take part in this. And I waited outside because I had a friend who was in there. I witnessed people running out of this event and they had far too few people supporting. I mean, for me, when you are, you are holding those kind of spaces, you have to have guardians or angels. We sometimes call them in the room. People who are going to be walking around, who are regulated in themselves, who are masters at holding space, who can witness and not need to dive in and fix and rescue, but be present with people wherever they are at. I didn't see that and it made me so angry. And what I know to be true because I've heard it far too many times now, is that people take themselves to some kind of breath work event or you know, trauma releasing somatic event because they know that there's something that they want to change in themselves and they have an experience that makes it worse. That activates trauma, retraumatizes them. Causes the nervous system to go into complete shutdown or overload and, and then they never come back. And so we're sending all these people out, not we, you, me, because we are very, I hope and trust that we are both really aware of this stuff, but there are people out there who are sending people back into the world without any kind of integration, without any kind of support. And it just makes my blood boil. And, and anger is something that I never allowed myself to feel when I was in the height of codependency. And, and I really can connect with that feeling of anger now. Because I feel that is deeply unfair to the people who have come with the best of intentions, who want to be supported, who want to have space held for them, who recognize that there are things to release, that you know it is time for them, and then they are not met in the same energy or the same Love and love is something that motivates me always. I think love is inseparable from a role of service. I, I have had exactly those same experiences, uh, across breath work, across other energetic modalities even. Um, I had a, an ayahuasca experience where on one of the nights there was very, very poor holding. I was lucky, but I, I, I scraped through that. Last experience And I think both you and I come also from a space of, of deep human generosity that sees practitioners as human beings. This is hard stuff. It's actually not easy to hold space. It takes huge amount of attention, huge amount of experience, huge amount of co-facilitating. Like you say, anytime we're wanting to support a big experience for someone, I think we have to be really realistic about how does a human being experience, how does a human being learn what is actually generative for a sustained change? So much of the time when we're in a fear state or we're in a state of challenge, the knee jerk reaction because the system nervous system cognition are wired to get you out of that as quickly as possible is A, it has to be fast. B, it has to be now and C. It has to be of the same dosage of pain or pleasure that I am. Uh. Currently experiencing. So we get into this mentality where it has to be really strong. It's like having a triple espresso. It has to be really strong. Yeah. In order for it to get through the walls. I remember a really gorgeous friend of mine actually on that same IA journey, saying to me on the second night, like, I'm just gonna like gonna fucking nail it. Like, yeah, I'm gonna like get through all of the like trauma and the pain and I'm gonna like. Let's do it all now, let's get it all neatly done so that tomorrow I can go home and carry on with my life. Exactly. And his intention was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna like break this wall in myself. And we had a really gentle, possibly slightly patronizing conversation with him, but it's fine. We love each other. It's, it's all good. Um, but I, I did, I said, I, I wonder what it might be like if rather than separating from this part of you, rather than wanting to defeat it, I. Sort of victim, victim mentality. We could allow this to be a truly healing experience if the, the mother, that's what ayahuasca is known as. If the mother could, yes, of course, be confronting. She's sort of known for that in, uh, plant medicine terms. But could she also be a solace? Could she be a balm? Could. Could there be flow here? And integration, like you say, is such an important, and I do think it relates to this, how, how intoxicating is it to be the lead figure of an experience like that? And how quickly for maybe any of us could that make us disassociate from the people in the room. Yeah, I think one of the key things here is around intention. The intention of the practitioner. So is my intention to take people, people through some kind of transformative, massive, life changing journey. That's not about them. That's about me. And you know about my ego again, about how am I gonna feel when that person comes out and go, my God, that was the most incredible thing I've ever experienced in my entire life. And actually, it's not about me at all. It's about them. It's about going at the pace at which they are. Available and ready. It's about holding that space and trusting that their body, their, their energy, every will give them what they need in that moment. So sometimes I'm facilitating conscious connected breath work, which is, you know, potentially one of the more activating forms of breath work. And I'm witnessing people and it looks like nothing's happening. And I could go into a story of like, I'm doing it wrong and it should be bigger and it should be bolder, and it should be better, and it should be more activating. And then when I mean, and inevitably time after time, people come back afterwards and they'll, they'll share what happened for them, what they saw, what they felt in their bodies. And I have to remember that I'm judging. People's exteriors from my interior, and I can't ever possibly know what's going on inside somebody's body. But if my intention is pure, which is to hold a safe space for their body to go wherever it needs and wants and is able to go today, then I'm, I'm satisfied with that. That brings us right back to this theme of self-worth and dependency or not, because unless I have innate self-worth self value, I can't actually really connect to my primary purpose. I'm too tied up in what's the outcome and the outcome that I'm looking for is that they reinforce to me something I do not in my myself, believe. If I don't believe that I'm good enough, I need you to convince me through your behavior or through your, yes. Through your facial expression. Yes. That, that, that you are having an incredible time. It's the external validation piece, and again, that's so part of codependency is I need somebody else to tell me how good I am, because I do not believe it for myself. It's so tricky. You know, we've been talking quite a lot recently about, um, this world of creativity. So, uh, before Sophie was a holistic practitioner, she was a creative in it. Well, I dunno if it was very in it, but Yeah. A bit in it, but it was kind of your world, right? Yeah. Like the, the actor space, the writing space, the production space. Mm-hmm. And I work with a lot of women in that field now and. They have this really tricky ask because they are being asked to be increasingly visible public, um, self-promoting, promoted by others, and yet they also have to keep their feet on the ground and focus on the job at hand and not overly attached to this flurry of free things and money and acclaim coming towards them. And the reason that that's critical is. If it's, if life is like a series of waves, yeah, you'll love it when it's going up, but it's obviously gonna go down again. And we become way too fragile. If we really attach to the pleasure side, we really attach to the acclaim side. We become way too fragile to the dip. Absolutely. The only way you can survive in that industry, I think is if you have a solid route. And it seems to me to be the case, and this is probably the case also for you and I. That that root also has to come from things that are really quite separate from what we do professionally. Mm-hmm. Human relationships, hobbies, dancing, creativity, whatever it is. Yeah. There has to be a life that's separate. Do have you had to cultivate that? Absolutely. Um. So it, I was just reflecting this morning actually. It's very strange. My, you know, if I, if I look at my career, it's been a rather circuitous and interesting and winding journey. But yeah, you're right. I started in, in the film and theater world and I've spent a lot of time around that and now I, I have two young adult children who are both in going into that world too. it, it's interesting how much of that stuff is now weaving into my work now. Um, so for example, I just came back from hosting a retreat and the theme was play and we ended up doing a whole load of sort of theater improvisation type fun exercises. And, um, it's, it's so fun. But yes, I absolutely, I. Know that I need to cultivate more joy and fun in my life, and creativity is a really, really important part for me. And, and singing has become a, a very important part for me. So I'm always on the hunt for more opportunities to, to sing because that just nourishes and feeds my soul and dancing too. Like, and, and none of it being the kind of, you've got to do it this way. The perfectionistic again, which kind of ties in with codependency, perfectionism, and um, and doing it right. Um, now the, it's about finding the fun and the freedom and the ease and the joy and the laughter and the, the community and the connection. Those the important pieces for me. So I don't want to do anything that's kind of highly choreographed and stressful. I wanna do something that feels fluid and. Fun and easy. You've reminded me of one other topic, which I think we would be doing a disservice if we didn't touch on during this four hour sofa based riff. One of the things that we talked about was societal expectations around partnership babies, and. And this thing that can happen where people make assumptions about whether it's good or bad that we are married or divorced, single or coupled, childless, even the word childless. I am childless. It's, I'm child free. Exactly. It's, it's a lost mentality. And, and you know, I say that as someone who still considers, do I want a baby? How could I make that happen? Is that even biologically possible for me? All of that stuff. Mm. Mm-hmm. But I wonder what your experience has been like of, uh, navigating and perhaps in this non codependent zone, sticking your own claim, your own journey. In the realm of relationship, romantic relationship, partnership. Tell us a little bit about that. Oh, such an interesting one. Um, and I, I think what was so apparent to me when my marriage ended was the number of questions about, well, when are you gonna get back on the horse? When are you gonna start dating again? What's. What's, you know, are you with somebody as if it was somehow wrong not to be with somebody. And I think the, the best and most powerful thing for me since the end of my marriage has been the relationship with myself and coming to know and understand and reclaim myself So I now, I come to relationships from such a completely different place, from a much healthier sense of self. A much, much clearer sense of what it is that I, where my boundaries are, like what I am willing. To tolerate or not tolerate in relationships, what I'm available for, what I'm not available for. I've got a much clearer sense of the kind of relationship that I'm calling in and of, of letting go of. society's expectations. I mean, you know, I was a sucker always for a romcom. I really always was like, I'm gonna get the thunderbolt, you know, all of that kind of thing. And, and now I realize how much. Unbelievable stress and pressure. I was putting on myself around that, and I, it used to be, I'm not ashamed to admit it now, but I used to go on dates and if I liked the person, I would then go into a tailspin of anxiety for weeks, and I used to hear from various people, you are meant to enjoy it. It's meant to be fun. It was not, it was miserable because I had a huge amount of unresolved trauma in my system. And it wasn't until I went and had some EMDR therapy myself, but I actually started to enjoy hanging out with new unfamiliar people and really feeling like I am open to meeting new people. And so, yeah, it's a lot of it is about letting go of these societal expectations. I had friends who wanted to be straight into relationships, remarried. Having more children. I had friends who were like, I am never going near a relationship ever again in my entire life. I had friends who were like, great, now I get to go and play the field and I'm having a lot of fun. Thank you very much. Mm-hmm. And I have to realize that I am a unique individual. I can navigate this in my own way and I'm gonna let go of any of the shame stuff'cause it's nothing to do with me. Of whether I am or not in a relationship that's other people's beliefs and expectations, and I don't need to carry that. It goes back to that responsibility piece of codependency. Again, I'm not responsible for other people's feelings and expectations. Amen to that. As I hear you, I'm really reminded of the fact that for you, what you desire, what you want has become of. Prime importance even although you live a life of real dedication to others in all of the domains that you offer to other people. I was also thinking when I first started studying Pilates, which was about 10 years ago. I had done it since I was 15, but um, I didn't sort of start transitioning into it professionally until about 10 years ago. Um, I remember being told a Joseph Pilates quote, which was that you are as old as your spinal health. I. Something along those lines. And it's been really interesting to me that at the age of 37, I get a lot of comments now about, oh my God, you're single. First of all, people don't know my, they can't really work at my age either they think I'm older than that, or they think I'm a lot younger than that. But B you know what, you're not, you're not in a relationship. You're not married. You haven't got kids. And, and their fear starts to tick. It's, it's actually their fear clock. It's not mine. Mm. Because the reality for me is my age feels. Sort of irrelevant actually. Oh, so irrelevant. isn't it strange to think that society has said by this age, this is where you are meant to be as though we're blueprinted. Yes. Biology has definitely given me far deeper earnings for babes now than I had before. I have a, a sense of the, the ality of me now that I never had before, and I, and I deeply do desire that in part of me and in the other part of me. I'm like, what a wonderful gift that I've had all of this. Even the last two years to dedicate to this project, to my clients, to building a home in North London to all of this stuff that would've been obliviated if I had a small crying humor attached to me. And when I was sitting with you and in listening to what you've just shared, I'm so reminded of that as well, that you are just setting the pace and the tempo and the delights and pleasures of your life. And it is a rich. Joy for anyone to be in your space and to dance with you in relationship, but that's just gonna be a very organic thing. I think trust is something that has come in so much more. I used to feel like I had to kind of micromanage and control things. Again, that was part of the codependency thing, that survival strategy, and now I feel like. I am trusting. I trust that the right person will come into my life at the right time. The right people will come into my life at the right time because it's not just about a significant other. Yeah. You came into my life. So the right people come into my life. There's, and there's a divine timing and I, I love that and I'm, I'm so open to that. And. That just feels juicy and good. And, you know, you and I are, are examples of people who've done things in very different ways. I, you know, I, I had children relatively young. My, my two, uh, young adults, extraordinarily. Um, and, uh, you know, so I find myself at this place, but it's still me, my most, me, myself, and I. Isn't it a fun journey? Mostly fun, sometimes not. I, I think the odd car crash is important in giving you the grit and perseverance and learning experiences to navigate your way. Yeah. Honey, as expected, you have been a riotous treat. Thank you so much for being with us. where can people find you if they wanna know more? Uh, so the easiest place is my website, www.sophiebrigstocke.com, and uh, I am on Insta and Facebook. So at Sophie Brigstocke is probably the best way to find me. Beautiful. And I will include dear listeners in the show notes, Sophie's upcoming retreats and experiences. Uh, I have received her magic before and it is a truly divine thing. So on that note, we are gonna love you and richly leave you for your week, but. Thank you so much for the time that you dedicate in joining us in these conversations. It means the world. It is literally the purpose of this channel to serve you guys as deeply as we can. Let us know what resonates. Let us know what you wanna hear more of, and uh, we will connect with you soon.

Anthea:

Gorgeous listeners. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.